Gnod - Mirror

It’s tough with bands like Gnod to really fully encapsulate their essence on record. However, it is fun to try and do so, and it is also fun for bands and musicians to record do the whole release thing, and have tangible reality based physical products to sell at fairs, gigs etc, and that make much less noise than an actual performance, and needs much less people to execute. So here we are, with another Gnod release.

Gnod have a lot of releases from over the last decade, today we enjoy a doomy, slow groove, sludgy release of just three tracks, and a remix. The perfect soundtrack to my painful emergence from slumber on an angry Sunday morning. Fittingly, both the tracks have biblical references. The first wastes no time in getting to the point, it’s huge and non-negotiable. Tanking might be a better description. It also attempts to be frightening and unnerving. The sounds are all there, droning guitars and slow drums. It’s title is “Learn to Forgive”, it’s pretty in that ugly bastardised raw doom-rock way.

The second track, Sodom & Gomorrah has my attention after it’s slow build intro, when our narrator Neil Francis opens the dirge with the statement “Escape is now deafening”, which is a bloody genius opener! It’s so true! The dirge wonderful joy does grant us freedom! Freedom from the daily, the grind, the whatever… get free by getting deaf. It’s a nice notion anyway. And for many, at least in the first instances of witnessing the power of rock n roll, it’s kinda true. I guess Gnod and its ilk are the most detachment we can expect without drugs. Maybe combine them with drugs and see how you get on?! I’m not saying to take drugs though, obviously…